Cross Curricular Planning Professional Development

I had the opportunity to work with one of the teacher specialists for staff development in Frederick County, Liz Stiffler. She is the one who is assigned to us because we have not made AYP. She must have a pretty fun job but I can see how some staff may view her as a threat since we are required to attend. So I offered to collaborate with her on one of her sessions. Once again, I am always looking for opportunities to showcase how technology can be used for instruction, even for professoinal development.



The first couple sessions that we attended had some really great ideas for getting students motivated and appeal to different learning styles. I generated several ideas for including technology in those sessions. So when I approached Liz about working together to include a technology componenet, she was more than willing to work together on the idea.

The topic Liz wanted to do was "Cross Curricular Planning." At the beginning of the year, the staff brainstormed ideas of what sort of support the staff development team could give them. One of the ideas was to demonstrate cross curricular planning. So Liz and I brainstormed how to present this in only a 45 minute session. I suggested we make a movie of a sample team meeting where teachers were doing cross curricular planning. This was an exciting idea.

Liz generated a script and we used Inspiration to create a cross curricular planning guide which we would give to teachers are the professional development session. Liz recruited some of her colleagues at Hayward Road and we met to film the video. Later we went back to TJ Middle to edit the video with Windows Movie maker. Finally, Liz 'hosted' a professional development video which we made with VlogIt! software.

We presented the video to the staff on a wintry day when snow was falling. Unfortunately, the snow forced the closing of school early, so we only had time to present to two teams. The first group, made of the sixth grade team did very well. I heard lots of great ideas of how to incorporate skills from other content areas into lessons. The staff seemed to really "get it" and seemed to see the value in it. I am sure many of them already did some cross curricular integration in the lessons on their own, but having a structured time to plan with other teachers usually helps improve a lesson.

As an elementary trained teacher, I firmly believe in the value of cross curricular planning. Students need to see and use skills outside of the content area before it begins to sink in as important to know. Otherwise, they use the skill in math class and walk out the door, never to think about it again. Children need to use a skill 25-40 times before it becomes part of their though process. I know that if I don't do something with great frequency for a while, I will always forget what to do. That's why we can't expect students to divide fractions on Tuesday, take the test on Wednesday and be able to recall that information if they never divide fractions again before the at MSA.

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Flexible Evening High Experiences

The Flexible Evening High program has expanded to include satellite locations instead of the single meeting place in Walkersville. That allows more students to access courses since there is a bus stop next to my location at TJ Middle. I was asked to be the acting administrator for FEH at TJ Middle. Being the acting administrator for Flexible Evening High has been a good experience of the little details that administrators deal with on a daily basis. This is a change for me because most of what I do is professional development and not a lot of "administrivia." Some of my duties include entering students into the server at TJMS, troubleshooting log ins, assisting teachers with collecting necessary supplies, addressing discipline, monitoring the school to ensure the other groups using the facility are not interfering with FEH instruction, and making sure all students are safely picked up from school.

One of the lessons I've learned is that teachers will frequently look to you to take care of their problems. Most of the issues that come up are simple procedural or technological. But every now and then we have something interesting come up.


So far, the most excitement we've had at FEH is the night when one young woman who is working toward her HS diploma began to have labor pains. She gutted it out through most of the night but called a friend to come pick her up to take her to the hospital. Since this could have been my first "medical emergency" I needed to decide if an ambulance needed to be called. My first thought was why a "friend" was called and not the father or a parent. I figured it would be a question that didn't need to be asked if she was over 18, so I asked and it turns out she was over 18. So that precluded the "locus parenti" hat I wore as the administrator. She had to wait only about 10 minutes for her friend to arrive and I walked her out to the car. She was in class the next week, still pregnant. It was a false alarm.

The only discipline problem I've had to address so far is a student who was on instant messenger when they shouldn't be. According to the FCPS Acceptable Use Policy, high school students can use instant messaging services for educational purposes. The girl claimed she was chatting with students about the work they were doing. I didn't buy it and simply asked her to turn it off and use the built in pager system on the course site if she needed to chat with students in her class. As it turns out, the girl was suspended from her day school for violating the Acceptable Use policy and other infractions. I didn't learn of this until after school was over and she was talking to some friends of hers outside while waiting for her ride. Suspensions from the day school carry over to FEH as well. I explained that to her and she said no one told her. That's probably true since we had a similar situation two nights before with another student. I emailed the assistant principal for night school to find out if there are procedures for letting the FEH satellite locations know that a FEH student has been suspended. It would make sense to have one point of contact at FEH and that contact person would notify the relevant teachers and administrators. I will suggest this to the assistant principal when I meet with her next.

UPDATE 11-13-07: One student left school one night and announced that her ride went to the high school instead of coming here and didn't know how to get to TJ Middle. I thought that was odd since the middle school is about 500 yards from hte High School. She was planning to walk to the high school. I grew concerned because there was once a known sex offender living between TJ Middle and the high school and I wasn't comfortable with a young lady walking at night where there could be a predator. So I asked her to remain on campus. She was very upset with the restriction and I asked her to call her sister, who has gaurdianship of her, to get permission. I spoke with the sister on the phone and got permission. I also asked her to write a note granting permission in the future for the student to walk home. As it turns out, that was not necessary. Since she is classified as a walker on her emergency card, the permission is assumed. Still, I wouldn't want my teenager walking near the house of a registered sex offender.

Update 12/4/07: I have been concerned about students from FEH walking down the street and being picked up on the corner. Since it is dark out by the time class lets out, it's hard to see if the student is a FEH student or one of the students in another program. So I felt it necessary to remind the students to stay in the cement area in front of the school and have their rides pick them up there so we can account for all FEH students. I don't know every student because we have a rolling enrollment policy so we get new students every week. That adds to the confusion so it is best that all FEH students stay where it is lit and where we can monitor their whereabouts.

Update 12/6/07: The FEH courses are in all four computer labs. The Tech Ed teachers have been hiding their printer toner cartridges because they don't want the supplies that are purchased from their operations budget to be used by outside groups. That is a reasonable stance. So I mitigated the situation by asking the Assistant FEH principal if FEH could purchase some paper and toner for the Tech Ed teachers. The answer was very quick "yes." So that made the tech ed teachers happy and FEH teachers will be able to print. We're still waiting for the supplies to come in.

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Processing Office Referrals

Through the regular course of my job, I have many opportunities to work with teachers and present staff development opportunities. If you ask most admininstrators, that is one of the key reasons they would state for becoming an administrator. That is true for me as well. One of the less glamorous tasks an administrator has to do is handle discipline problems. TJ Middle has its share of studens who get into trouble and that must be dealt with in a timely and judicious fashion.



I had a few opportunities to process discipline referrals to the office and they weren't for any major offenses. There were a couple for not serving a teacher's detention and a couple for continued classroom disruptions. Those are the types of referrals that are pretty cut and dry. I didn't have the opportunity to process students with major "drama" such as harassment or bullying, or something like a fight. Those usually require more time to sort out because there are two sides to every story ... and then there is the truth.

The law requires an administrator to give due process to all students who are in danger of losing their property - i.e. their educational opportunity. Discipline must be maintained so that students can have a safe and inviting climate for learning. One of the many observations I have noticed is that a lot of the "little things" go uncorrected. It's always been my belief that is you demonstrate a lack of tolerance for small infractions, then it is less likely to escalate into larger infractions. This is something I would need to study more, however, there has been precident here at TJ Middle for this.

When the building opened in 2000, there were several rules that some teachers thought were childish but I felt were effective in maintaining order. First, all teachers would walk their classes to lunch and pick them up. This is a typical arrangement in elementary school. To me, middle school students are still learning how to be independent and require even more structure at times. I do 7th grade recess duty. It used to be that I would follow the students in from outside and I would see them running and pushing down the hallway. Now, when I bring the 7th grade students in from outside, I require them to walk behind me and don't push. Then I stand outside their lockers. Whomever I see pushing or running I pull aside and they will be the last 7th grader to go to their locker. At first I wasn't sure if I should just write detentions, but I think that being last is more of a deterent that being given a detention because being pulled out of line and kept until last is an immediate consequence. Too often students shrug off a consequence that isn't applied until days later.

The other thing we did was to assign seats in the lunch room by homeroom. It was originally done as a way for students to get to know each other. But it can also provide the structure and routine that students need in a mostly unstructured environment. In recent years, we implemented assigned seats as a disciplinary action. I don't see assigned seats as a disciplinary action but a way to keep caos from insuing. Some will argue that students need the unstructured time to blow off steam for the day. I agree but that is why we have recess. Fewer and fewer students participate in recess because a lot of their day is still unstructured and in effect, a mini recess of its own. There is an old adage that if you give someone an inch, they will take a mile. This is often the case in middle school where students are constantly testing the boundaries of what they can and cannot do.

I'm a person who believes consistancy and routine are good for setting high expectations. If students don't know what the expectation is, then they don't know what they need to do to be successful. That doesn't mean the rule are inflexible, just that it is easier and more effective to grant more independence than to take it away. In the end, fewer discipline problems and behavior issues means more time on task and more learning takes place.

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ELC Month 2a (Inspiration)

For the October Technology Professional Development session, I worked with our Renzulli Enrichment teacher, Mrs. Cole, to present the concept mapping software, Inspiration^®. Inspiration is a program that allows students to create visual webs and graphic organizers that can then be turned into writing. The process of linking ideas to each other helps students to plan, organize, evaluate, comprehend and analyze their ideas, which leads to improved written proficiency. We spent several hours modifying the existing FCPS Inspiration handout to suit our goals and objectives. Mrs. Cole and I first decided we needed real world examples of how Inspiration is used in the classroom.


During one of our school's PLC dates, she and I covered a class of directed level 6th graders. Our lesson was about the use of "power verbs" and their meaning as it related to taking the MSA. The standard lesson was a paper and pencil pre-test and a PowerPoint slide show that reveals the answers one at a time. Neither Mrs. Cole nor I felt the group of students with whom we would be working would be able to sit through that lesson as it was written. So we decided to have the students use Inspiration software to create a vocabulary concept map for each of the power verbs. The students used Inspiration to create a web of all the power verbs and used the searchable symbol library to find pictures or clip are that best represented each of the words.

The students were still off task a lot while we walked them through the task of typing the power words into their Inspiration diagram. However when it came time to insert the pictures, the off task behavior declined dramatically. Students who worked diligently and completed the task we asked to add the definitions of each power verb to the diagram. These definitions were provided for them on a blue book mark which we handed out to all of the students.

In the future, we could modify this lesson a bit more by preparing the diagram with the power verbs already entered. This could reduce the off task behaviors we saw as we led the students through the task of typing each word. The drawback to this is that many students have never used Inspiration and bypassing the basic functions of the software won't give them the opportunity to use such a valuable tool.

When we met as a staff, I wanted to show teachers real examples of how Inspiration can be used without creating a lot of extra work. We downloaded the county's BCR Planing Guide and used Inspiration to make a simple organizer based on this common tool. Unlike many of the sample diagrams which are used to "show off" Inspiration's capabilities and flexibility, we wanted to Keep It Simple. We also showed the staff how to access the sample, and sometimes complex, sample diagrams. This would give them a better understanding of how Inspiration can be used as well as trigger ideas. Finally, we walked the teachers through the creation of a basic diagram. As a follow up, teachers are to use Inspiration in some capacity with students and reflect about how it helped or hurt the effectiveness of the lesson. As a challenge, I asked teachers to export their diagrams as a picture file and include it in the discusion message they post. All of the steps to do that are in the handout I created.

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Hess Alert Meeting

Each year the director of testing and assessment presents information to the schools about how they will not make AYP if they continue on the same level of improvement. This is nothing new. However, this year when the "Hess Alert Meeting" was scheduled, it was handled differently.


Normally, the leadership team will pack into a few cars and head down the road to the Church Street offices for a PowerPoint presentation of our MSA scores. This time, the central office staff, including the superintendent and assistant superintendent, came to our school. Instead of showing us our scores, which we already had, the discussion centered around what it is we are doing to actively meet the needs of our Special Education population, who did not make AYP.

The administration discussed our intervention programs such as Read 180, LARI, and the Math and Reading Intervention teachers. They also detailed our after school "clubs" which are geared toward the students who are "at risk" of not passing MSA. They include the homework club, organization club, girls and boys club, and the technology club.

The intervention classes are what students take instead of an elective if they don't pass the MSA Reading or Math. They get an extra reading class or extra help in math. We have a couple different reading programs which students take. We don't have extra math courses yet but the math intervention teachers pull small groups or co-teach with math teachers to help needy students.

One of the things I have always wondered is if we are spreading our talents too thin. The school day interventions are a success because they have shown to help students - even though it wasn't enough for our special education students. But what about the after school programs? The biggest problem is there is no accountability. How do we know if we are helping students? I know that my club is more of an enrichment club. I have created an assessment tool using the Maryland State Student Technology Standards. I will fill one out at the end of each semester to indicate which of the technology stadard we have addressed and how well I believe the student has mastered them. Of course, since we operate as a club, there are no formal assessments. It is all project based and not always "evaluated" in the sense that I evaluate a Tech Ed project for my sixth graders. This is something I need to get a handle on since students will be assessed on the technology standards at some point.

One Idea I have is to use technology to track students who attend the after school club and then see if their is improvement in their grades. I could create a database into which teachers would enter student information. It would give us a record of attendance (which we take by hand) that would be easily sorted and formated for reporting. The way we track student attendance by putting it in a word processing document doesn't allow for data analysis without a lot of work. This is something I'd probably do if my first school as an administrator has after school programs.

I find it somewhat ironic that the major tools used to improve reading and math are software tools. We use Read 180 for reading instruction and Moving with Math for assessment of students' math abilities. Read 180 is a comprehensive reading instruction program which the teachers have the students work on at least 30 minutes per class. The math intervention teacher tests each student using the Moving with Math program to determine where skill gaps exist and plan for intervention. Once again, it is the use of technology and the analysis of data that drives our instruction.


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My Role in Professional Development This Year

I met with the principal to discuss my role in staff development. Since we did not make AYP and I hold the belief that using technology as an instructional tool is a big part of getting students to perform better in school, I wanted to voice some of my concerns and get feedback from her. So we met in her office to go over them. It was a productive meeting which answered many of my questions but as with any new adventure, there are some answers that will just have to unfold as the year progresses.



As always, my biggest concern is my lack of time to work with teachers. I wear a great number of hats in this building from Tech Ed teacher, ISS facilitator, to computer repair guy, to Technology Resource Teacher Specialist, to Technology Coordinator. All of these jobs have important roles in the school to maintain an orderly school envirnoment and make learning possible. However, the one role I have that I don't see a solid connection to making AYP is being in ISS for half a day, every other day. It is the way it is but I needed clarification on why a highly skilled, highly qualified teacher is needed to fill that need. The answer was straightforth and simple: it's a staffing issue. The front office people are frequently needed to cover classes where a substitute teacher doesn't show up. That was something I didn't realize was so frequent. One other possiblity it to have the Community Liason cover ISS for one block. That way we all have one block to cover and that's definitely a good compromise. Apparently, our community liason is also called out for substituting frequently. I'd still be willing to structure so that if they are needed to be in a classrom, I can just do ISS for them. At least that will free up some additional time.
I feel that my talents are underused but it's not a concious choice to under use them. The situation is what it is. However, if I were an administrator, I'd want my staff with the skills that can help the school make AYP in the position they need to be in to get the students and teachers the help they need. Sometimes, I feel devalued because my vision is not shared and/or it is not communicated in a way so others see the great value and potential it has. So, the ISS situation is the way it is.

Since I always try to find compromise in any situation, I suggested that I work directly with the Special Education teachers since they are working with our SpEd students in a dedicated resource room this year. My hope is that I will be able to share ideas on how to use technology to capture the attention of our students and to provide accomodations for the more needy students. In turn, I hope the Special Education staff will share these ideas with the classroom teachers who will then apply them to their regular instruction. At least the theory sounds good. It reminds me of "Trickle Down Economics." We'll see how well this works.

Scheduling will be an issue because the SpEd teachers are all over the place. The only day when they are not scheduled to be in a classroom is Thursday when IEP meetings are held. The IEP schedule changes weekly so some SpEd teacher will be available. Of course, if it is an ISS day, I may not be available. We'll have to do the best we can.

After the meeting I shared my idea of working directly with the Special Ed teachers with the team leader. She thought it was a good idea but concerned about another "meeting" that the teachers had to attend. She suggested that my meetings with them be used in place of the required ELC participation. I felt that was a good idea and I told her I would discuss it with the principal.

I believe this is a good plan on paper, but I'm not sure how it will work. I know that we are scheduled to get about 100 new computers that will take weeks to set up, I have my own staff development presentations to create, I have my Tech Ed class to teach, I have to troubleshoot problems on a network I am not intimately familiar with, I have to take my last grad class, I have to plan for my ELO club after school, and I have to be home immediately after all official school business is finished so my wife can go to work and I stay with my children. So this is going to be quite a juggling act. Only time will tell if it will work.

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Network Migration

FCPS has switched from Novell servers to MS Windows 2003 servers. The predominant theory is that it will make maintaining the WAN more efficient since FCPS has so few IT specialists. It provides a more centralized method of control and allows for the technology services people to keep an inventory of every machine connected to the network. This step makes sense since there isn't the time or resources to have actual technicians work on the workstations. The new LanDesk makes this possible.

The Technology Coordinator of each building was asked to be present during the migration period since the techs who would do most of the work may have questions about specific hardware and locations in the building. I spent several days with the techs as they upgraded the system. The process wasn't too complicated and the imaging of the computers was done from the server, so no CD-ROMs were required to be carried around.


Overall the new system is very nice. However the security policies are much stricter than before. One of the biggest drawbacks is that staff members cannot install printers. This is because the county is concerned about licensing issues. Too many staff members would install software, knowingly or unknowingly, without the proper software license. So the decision was made to prevent software installation by anyone other than the network administrator. This creates some more work for me but it is manageable. One of the things I like most about the new system is the ability to remote control other computers. This really helps me to assist teachers when I'm in the ISS room and cannot physically be in front of their machine. Of course, if it doesn't turn on, then I can't remote to the machine.

When the staff returns, there will be a small learning curve, but I don't anticipate to be too difficult. The concepts are the same; only the environment has changed.

The decision to migrate to Windows from Novell makes sense for the current situation. However I would love to do more research into the total cost of ownership of using Linux based servers, thin clients and open source software. While students will always need to use MS Word and the rest of the office suite, many of the software titles we use have freely available open source equivalents. The use of Linux servers and open source software in a thin client environment can save 100s of 1000s of dollars over time when compared to proprietary software and operating software. A major paradigm shift such as that would have to be done very slowly over time and would require buy-in from a lot of stakeholders. But that's where the fun begins!
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The TJ Middle ELC

Mr. Lininger and I met to discuss how the ELC would be laid out. He wanted an area where the latest news of what was going on in the professional development process could be posted for teachers to read. He also wanted a way that staff could sign up for their chosen topic for the month. At first we talked about how to create one professoinal development "course" with many topics. But I suggested that one course site could become cumbersome and difficult to use as we continue to use the ELC and the amount of information grows. So I offered the idea to separate each professional development topic into its own course site and have a "master" site with news and information about professional development. I knew that Moodle could "link" courses together using the meta course option, but I had never used it before.



Now that the decision has been made to use an Electronic Learning Community, I finally get to showcase what Moodle can do. One of the great featurs of Moodle is the creation of a Meta course which acts as a "master" course. A meta course may be used as a common area to allow Participants in specific courses to interact with each other, such as in an ELC with multiple topics which should logically be separated. Although I hadn't set up a meta course before, the documentation with Moodle made is easy to figure out. All I had to do was check a box for the main ELC course site and check a box on each of the 4 professional development topic sites to link it to the main site. This also made maintenance easier since all I had to do was enter staff names and log in information on the main site and it was automatically copied to the linked sites.

I feel pretty good about this set up. It seperates the differnt topics so the information doesn't get "muddied" as time goes on. It's clearly defined and easy to use. I put up extra menu blocks to help make navigating from one Professoinal Development site to another easier. Hopefully, teachers will find this easy to use.

One big question will be how much training time will I get with the staff. As I have stated before, the greatest professoinal development will be ineffective is staff do not have enough time to process what they are learning. Since few teachers have participated in an online course, and fewer have used Moodle, it will be critical to have at least two opportunities to present the ELC to the staff members so they can be introduced to the site, have an opportunity to practice, and then provide an opportunity to come back together to and ask questions or help each other.

Irregardless I will have to prepare detailed documentation for each staff member to help ensure this ECL works.

The other big question is how to train the facilitators. Since I have taken a course about online facilitating, I will have to rely on what I learned from that course. The general rule is to post a discussion forum that teachers can respond to and encourage discussion among the participants for that month by requiring the participants to read and respond to at least two other teachers' postings. It is also a skill to avoid the "That's a good idea" or the "I agree" response. Sometimes adults can be like students and do as little as possible to claim they have done the work. It's hard when we are all so busy, but I believe it will pay off in the end.

I have contacted one of the instructors, who is an FCPS employee to get advise. She said that my ideas so far are good and she'd be happy to help train the facilitators in any way they want to be trained. Hopefully the facilitators will be open to this.

EDIT 8-23-07: As I was afraid, teachers only had one 45 minute session with me which I feel went really well, but since it happened the first week back, I worry that there will be many questions when the end of September comes.
I had only one 45 minute session with the facilitators where only the bare minimum of information about using the ELC was given to them. I have noticed that forums are not set up in the most efficient manner, facilitators don't participate in their own discussion, and they are generally ignored. There really needed to be two sessions, one on how to use it, and one on how to facilitate.

EDIT 11-8-07 Teachers have voiced conecrns over how to use the ELC. They say it is not as user friendly as Blackboard. Others say it is much easier than Blackboard. In any case, most of the confusion appears to be from the infrequency of using the ELC, the lack of facilitator encouragement of continuing discussions, and that some of the discussions are just not set up well. I have offered to do another training with the facilitators but I haven't had anyone take the offer. So, where does that leave the ELC? As an administrator I would absolutely want to make sure the staff and facilitators are comfortable using the tools of the ELC. But I wonder why none of the administrators have come to me directly to ask what can be done?
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Summer PTSA Executive Board Meeting

This year we have a new PTSA president who is very motivated to get more parents involved in school functions and to improve communication among the teachers and students. We met at her house as the summer ended to talk about the coming school year. As usual, I made a pitch for the increased use of the web site to continue the lines of communication from school to home.


One of the issues we have been having with the school web site is that our web host, Xecu.net has not upgraded our server to include the latest version of MySQL. Most of the software we run on the web site requires a version of MySQL higher than what's on the server. So we are unable to upgrade. The reason we need to upgrade is to take advantage of new features of the software and new security patches. We are getting our web hosting for free so we don't have a position to make a request such as upgrading. So I suggested to the PTSA that we look into paying for hosting at Xecu.net or another hosting company. They asked me to look into options and one of the parents suggested a company she uses for hosting.

I had been using GoDaddy.com for a while and was pretty satisfied with the service. So I checked into their hosting plans that may suit our needs. I subscribe to the basic plan for $3.99/month and it has all the features we need: PostNuke CMS, Moodle LMS, PHP and MySQL with the correct version. The major drawback to their hosting plan is that is doesn't allow Secure Shell (SSH) access to the virtual server. This is a very important tool for managing a web site. It does allow FTP but I prefer SSH because it creates a remote console on the server so I can manage it as if I were sitting in front of the actual server. Of course, many security features are applied so I don't get total control, but enough to do what I need to to do. I believe that we could manage the site without SSH and since I don't know how much longer I'll be at TJ Middle before getting an administrative job, it probably won't matter. Not many people know how to use SSH. FTP is more common.

I have always considered communication to be one of the most important aspects of leadership. Communication brings together all the stake holders of the school and allows for dialog and the passing of information that will directly or indirectly impact each stake holder. The use of a web site to pass along that information, and in a more perfect world, to gather information from the stakeholders will allow me to make better judgments about the culture and climate of the school. When I eventually leave TJ Middle, I will want to continue using a web site for communication.


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Summer School Staff Training

Summer school was held at Frederick High School this year. The high school had already been migrated to the new Windows network. So it was up to me to bring all the teachers up to speed since most of them worked at schools were not already migrated. Unfortunately, I hadn't been shown how to use the new network either. So I set up a meeting with the FHS Technology Coordinator so we could walk through the process of logging in, adding staff members and students, and some basic trouble shooting.

The system seems to be straight forward and easy to use. So I created a short tutorial for the staff and called a brief meeting on the first day teachers reported. I handed out the login convention and we went to the computer lab to practice. There were a few teachers who had trouble getting on but after 10-15 minutes of practice, they all had the hang of it.

As a leader, it's important to help ease the transition from the old to the new. This time as simple handout was sufficient to get the staff online and working. Sometimes, as in the case of many of my technology staff development, more gradual and detailed information is needed to help the transition. Knowing when a short and sweet transition is appropriate and when a longer, more gradual transition is needed can be the difference between as successful new program and one that doesn't work. Click to Read more ...

MICCA 2007

Every year I present a topic at the annual Maryland Instructional Computer Coordinators Assocation (MICCA) conference. My MICCA presentation was about creating vodcasts and how they can be used as instructional tools. I created a screencast of the presentation here and it can also be found on the Tech Time blog. The conference is an excellent opportunity to learn how others are using technology to enhance instructions. Since this is my niche, I go with eyes wide open looking for new ways to improve instruction through technology. Lately, my big push has been for web 2.0 technologies in the classroom. This blog is an example of web 2.0 technology. Other types would include wikis, social networking sites, podcasting and vodcasting sites and other sites that seek to foster online community and collaboration. I have several entries about this on my instructional technology blog, Tech Time With Tony. Essentially, teachers need to integrate these technologies into their instruction if they want to really get students to be motivated and involved in school.

Over the course of this year, I have been doing several technology integration training. This was outlined in an entry I posted earlier this year. We have been posting our reflections about how the use of the new technology is received by the students. The majority of responses have been positive and show that student behavior issues are diminished when the class is engaged in a lesson using technology. This engagement is what can lead to increased achievement since time on task is correlated to increased comprehension and retention of knowledge. This is promising since most of the examples posted were from classes with a high number of special education students. So I am pressing to more time with teachers to help them plan lessons which will get the students engaged and motivated. As I continue to plan and work with teachers, I will devise ways to determine how effective the use of the technology is.

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Job Shadowing - Dr. Bonnie Ward

My long term leadership goal is to eventually be a director of technology in a school system. So it was a natural choice to shadow Dr. Bonnie Ward, the Executive Director of Technology Services.

I met Dr. Ward in her office at 8:00am and she was checking her email. She showed me her calendar for the day and there were several meeting and appointments for her to keep. The first item for the day was a meeting to discuss the network migration status. FCPS is in the midst of upgrading their network operating system from Novell to Microsoft Windows 2003. The meeting consisted of progress reports and discussion of the issues that are creeping up as the schools are migrated. I was asked my opinion of how students passwords should be initially set. The team was proposing an idea of incorporating the birthday and part of their name and then forcing the student to change their password. I suggested sticking with the student ID since students already know that number and then if they wanted students to be forced to change it, then they could.



After the meeting, Dr. Ward went back into her office and called the facilities manager to discuss the different codes required when purchasing something through the procurement system. She also showed me her major idea for next school year. She was going to purchase media carts for schools to be used as presenter station. TJ was opened in 2000 with media carts in each classroom. Unfortunately, there was no money to maintain the carts and they projector bulbs cost $400 each. They have begun to break and cost over $1400 to replace. So I was excited to see that TJ would get 10 new carts. I asked if we could simply get money to replace the aging components since we have most of the pieces. She said it was a good idea and would consider it.

She confirmed a few other details with other people and then sent a revised budget to the facilities manager. Someone popped by to request a meeting to discuss a personnel matter at 10:30. In the mean time she checked the meeting minutes from the morning.

When it was 10:30, we decided to meet at 11:00 since the personnel matter was sensitive and not appropriate for me to observe. I took the time to get a soda and use the restroom. Since I was familiar with many of the people at the Hayward Complex I took the time to say hello to a few before reuniting with Dr. Ward.

Dr. Ward had a lunch appointment with the CIO from FCC about a Girls in IT program. Dr. Ward asked me to tag along and offer my insight. At the lunch we discussed ways to get more females into a predominantly male field. The discussion was good but I feet as if I could have contributed more. My take was that girls were just as likely to play video games as boys up until age 13. I suggested a greater focus on the middle school girls to begin the grooming process to get high school aged girls into the program at FCC.

We returned to Dr. Ward's office and she checked her email again. She had to admonish a teacher who was using FCPS email to promote her home business. That was a clear violation of the Acceptable Use Policy. We chatted for a while until it was time for the BOE Planning meeting. Dr. Ward attends every planning meeting to keep up to date with policy decisions and to answer any technology questions the board members may have.

The meeting centered around the "Other Post Employment Benefits" which is now required of county agencies. The school system now needs to cover the costs of employees who have left FCPS and qualify for retirement benefits such as health care and life insurance. The discussion centered around how best to absorb the extra cost involved in picking up the tab for this.

I was also introduced to a reporter from the Frederick Gazette. Dr. Ward recommended to the reporter that I would be a good contact for technology ideas. That was a very flattering compliment from an Executive Director.

The meeting continued and Dr. Ward eventually had to leave for an appointment unrelated to school. The experience overall was pretty eye opening. A director certainly has a busy schedule and must juggle many issues at once. The schedule can be very fluid and must able to be flexible and adapt to the changing environment. Directors must be proactive and build good relationships with all stake holders both within the school system and outside the school system. Normally I am able to foster good relationships when the colleague makes the first move. A skill I will need to improve upon is making first contact and forging a positive relationship. I have been working on that lately as illustrated with the business partnerships I have created over the last couple years. Hopefully I can continue to refine those skills as I move into positions with more responsibilities.
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Creating a Screencast for MICCA

The 2007 MICCA Convention is next week and I have been working with Kerri Cole on a presentation about Video Podcasts (Vodcasts). I created a screencast of the presentation last night primarily to practice the presentation but to also have available to conference participants. It's my hope that more and more MICCA presenters will create a vodcast of some sort for others to watch. MICCA has so many good presentations that you just can't get to them all.
I have embedded the video below and you can read more of my reflection by clicking the "Read More" link below the video.



As an instructional leader, I would use this format for many different purposes. I feel it's a great format for facilitating professional development. New teachers need to have available to them examples to good teaching. As more and more demands on teachers' time is asked of them, there is less time for collaboration among peers. This collaboration is extremely important for the development of a teacher - new or experienced. Using vodcasts, teachers can view sample lessons at home or at school when they have the time to do so. This gives teachers greater control over their own professional development and does not lock them into a block of time to receive the opportunity.
Vodcasts can also be used to present instuctional practices, research, and technology. Most staff development excersizes are a "spray and pray" presentaion where a leader presents information and at the end of the meeting wishes the teachers good luck as they try to implement the information into their instruction. There is generally now follow up. Using vodcasts, teachers will have a permenant reference of the information they were presented. Of course, this does not make up for additional collaboration with other professionals, but it doest give teachers the opportunity to refresh their understanding of the original presentation.
Another way I would use vodcasts is for Welcome messages to parents and community members. Parents appreciate direct communication from the principal and using a blog site like Blogger and vodcast videos, parents can put a voice and face to the written word. It also allows the parents to see and hear the inflection and body language of the principal. The written word does not convey these "hidden messages" well and is often misinterpreted. With the vodcast, the intonation is there and can minimize misunderstanding. In addition, when miscommunication does develop, the vodcast can be reviewed to see why the miscommunication may have occured.
If you watched my screencast, I gave even more examples of how to use vodcasts as an instructional leader. So if you haven't please take the time to watch.
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Choosing a CMS for FCPS

Frederick County Public Schools is looking to revamp it's online image. So based on my experience using a CMS with the TJMS web site (see this blog entry), I was asked to be part of the group who would evaluate the companies who submitted a proposal. This was an excellent opportunity for me to participate in the selection process of a county-wide initiative. It would give me insight into the decision making process that frequently leaves school-based teachers scratching their heads wondering why money was spent on something when it doesn't seem to have value. Even though no open-source companies were considered as finalists, it was a real learning experience.



The first stage of the process was to independently review each of the proposals that were received. Some of the proposals definitely stood out from the competition while others were a sad attempt at gaining business. Through my computer consulting business, I've been on the preparation side of proposals and based on what I saw in the box I brought home, I was about middle of the road in terms of presentation of the proposal. Certainly a more professional look gets you noticed, but in the end the best proposals were given consideration.

We narrowed the choices down to four companies, all with experience serving school systems. The most intriguing company I reviewed was from a company who specialized in data warehousing and internet portals. In their proposal, parents would log in and they would be greeted with a personalized home page with their children's grades and schedules. Homework could also be displayed. This sort of system was closest to what I tried to put together for TJ Middle but much more dynamic. However, this company's software fell way short of the major requirements in the Request for Proposals from FCPS. The biggest deficit was the lack of customization and lack of teacher page capability. So this proposal was eliminated first.

As events turned out, the two remaining companies presented the next day but one was "delayed" at the airport. So we saw only the final proposal which had almost all of the features I would have liked to have seen in a CMS. The one thing that it didn't have was a centralized homework posting module. Instead, parents would have to go to each teacher's home page to view the homework of the student. That wasn't a deal killer by any means. Overall the CMS was very impressive and very customizable with a work flow that allows fine grain tuning of who can access and edit pages.

One of the reasons I wanted to be on this committee was that too often the central office people make technology decisions based on what they know and classroom teachers are not consulted. I was very happy to be given the opportunity to represent classroom teachers and school based staff. It was very apparent based on the questions asked by central office people that it was important for me to be there. The questions they posed centered around implementation and administration of the CMS as a whole. I focused my questions on teacher friendliness, practice applications by schools, and how it can be used as a tool, not just to communicate, but for learning. I was very pleased that all my questions were answered to my satisfaction.

Unfortunately, budgetary needs deemed this CMS to be put on the back burner. I have been told that a small pilot program is starting in the central offices but there is no public face to it as of yet. Hopefully one day the full CMS will be rolled out because I won't be at TJ forever and I'm not sure who will take over the web site duties for tjmiddle.org after I leave. I hope someone will be able to step up since it is a great tool and it would be one of the legacies I leave behind.
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Internet Safety is Everyone's Job

STRETCH PROJECT

This year, I took on a major parent event addressing online safety. This is an area of increasing concern for parents and since I am pretty Internet savvy, I thought I would take up the challenge. I participated in online training with the I-Safe organization which promotes online safety with free materials. I organized a planning meeting where I invited local Information Technologists and law enforcement officers to give input. Then I planned the presentation and publicized it to the media. It was a successful night with about 50 people in attendance. I had never organized an event of that size before and it was a lot of work, but well worth the effort.

I first learned of the iSafe organization at a Technology Coordinator's meeting. One of my fellow Tech Coordinators was presenting the iSafe information to the attendees and I immediately knew I had to do this for the parents at TJMS. It is something I wanted to do but lacked the neccessary knowledge to create the information by myself. ISafe is a non-profit group who creates materials and informational videos for teachers, parents, and community members to use for educating students, other parents, and the community at large about the dangers of the Internet and how to be safe.
I chose to bring in members of the community to supplement the prepared informational handouts. I contacted a friend of mine in IT Security who put me in touch with a man from his company who presents to parent and student groups. I also contacted local law enforcement to get an Internet Crimes officer to come out. I was lucky to have the Frederick County Sherrif agree to be part of the evening. He brought along one of his deputies who presents Internet safety to schools
One of the goals of iSafe is to spread the word about their organization. They want as many people as possible to push for education about safety online. I worked with parents to get up to three parents to take the iSafe training to be certified iSafe instructors. At the parent night, four main topics were presented to the attendees.

1. Avoiding Online Predators
2. Recognizing and dealing with Cybyer Bullies
3. Cyber Security
4. Identity Theft

Because I had been studying ways to hold effective parents nights, I wanted to give parents the opportunity to sign up for seperate topic sessions where they could get additional information from one of our experts. I also knew that to get exposure to the most number of parents, I would have to hold the topic nights on several occasions. This would give parents the opportunity to go to all four or pick and choose the ones they wanted.

To promote the event, I contacted local radio, newspaper and television stations to run an ad as a Public Service Announcement. Both radio stations in Frederick ran a piece about the parent night. The newspaper printed the event, but did not come to report on it. The television station did not return my phone calls. We even used the FCPS email blaster list to promote the event. In the end, we had about 50 parents and community members show up. I was hoping for about 100 but people told me that 50 was an excellent turn out. So I was pleased that we had that many people come to learn about being safe online.

As it turned out, very few parents signed up for the seperate break out sessions. So we decided to cancel them. However, when we do this event next year, I will start promoting it earlier to get more people. I would also get parents to become certified iSafe presenters sooner since they were apprehensive about presenting to parents with only a little time to prepare.

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Laptop Inventory Meeting

I was invited to participate in a discussion about how to best maintain a record of laptop inventory with the technology services department and the purchasing department. There is a growing problem with keeping the records straight since the price of laptops has fallen below $1000. FCPS will tag and inventory all computer electronics that are above $1000. anything below that is the responsibility of the individual school or department. Since I had responded to a survey about inventorying laptops saying we used our Library Media Center Follett software to track laptops, I was invited to the meeting to share that information as a possible way for other schools to keep their laptops straight.




The meeting consisted of the head of purchasing, the supervisor for Technology Customer Support, and several other people who had an interest in the process, including the Supervisor of Media Services. It started out with my explanation of how we barcode and all the laptops and enter them into Follett. Then the head of media discussed plans for a new media software system that would have additional capability to track resources such as laptops and projectors. We have been putting the laptops into Follett the same way we put books into the software. They were still negotiating the terms of the agreement and researching additional options. Basically, the new software have a central database so the people in Technology Services would be able to get a report of all laptops in FCPS. That was the primary goal for the technology services people. They needed to account for the 100s of thousands of dollars of laptop equipment in the system. After a lengthy conversation about the pros and cons of the Follett software, we adopted a standard procedure for entering the laptops into Follett.

This meeting was important because I would eventually like to be a director of technology services somewhere and accounting for all equipment would be one of my responsibilities. Using software is the only way to do this. The packages that were discussed in the meeting all cost 10s of 100os of dollars. My philosophy is to look for open source software solutions that would save taxpayer money and allocate the dollars saved to other resources resulting in an lower overall total cost of ownership.
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The TJ Middle Web Site

One of the first things I did when I became the Technology Coordinator of the building was to establish a school web site which would improve communication between the school and parents. It has always been my belief that when the school communicates effectively with the parents, students have a better support structure for the academics. The owner of Execu.net had a child in TJ at the time. He offered us free web hosting as a service to the school. I immediately made the arrangements to create tjmiddle.org to server our school. The web site was the first fully functional Internet portal for any of the Frederick County schools and still is today. Each year, I spend a fair amount of time updating and upgrading the site to continue the communication between the school and parents.





I created the site using the PostNuke CMS which is a free content management system (CMS) which uses Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP (LAMP) technology. A CMS can cost up to $25,000 or more to set up and additional money per year to continue using it. PostNuke was free to set up and did not require additional money to continue using it. Using PostNuke, teachers would all be able to post news and add events to a calendar which parents could view. Later on, I wrote my first PHP module for PostNuke, the Homework Online Portal. This allowed teachers to post homework for parents to check. The next year, I found a great free grade book program called Basmati, which works with the Easy Grade Pro electronic grade book software. Teachers found the Easy Grade Pro grade book, well, easy to use. It took only a few simple steps to export a text file of the current grades to the tjmiddle.org web site which allowed parents to check their students' grades. At the time, the county was recommending a program called Micrograde which was also popular with teachers. However, in order to get the grades online, the teachers had to pay about $25 per year to post grades or $995 per year for the school. Of course, TJ Middle didn't have $995 to spend on a grade book service. So I saved the school approximately $3000 for the three years we used Basmati. Eventually, FCPS purchased the Pinnacle grade book system for the county and we all switched to that.

The next year, I added a mailing list program, called PHPList, that would send HTML formatted emails to our parents. To me, this was a critical improvement since about 80% of parents in a survey responded they have some access to email either at home or work. That would me we could send instant communications about what was happening at school. We were the first school in the county to have such a program. Managing an email list is challenging and has logistical issues such as collecting emails from parents and pruning emails that go bad. For several years we did a pretty good job since the software has a method of "graduating" emails from one list to another. So we entered all parents into a list according to the grade level of their child. As the child advanced to the next grade, we moved the email to the appropriate grade list. Eventually, when the child leaves the school, the email is moved to a "friends" list and then pruned. Parents also have the ability to remove themselves from the list at any time. We are still using this software today.
A year after we started using our email software, FCPS began using Find Out First to email FCPS news to parents. This service is also offered to school for a few of $1500 per year. Again, our list is free and saves us that money.
The last piece of software I added to the web site was the Moodle Learning Management System (LMS). Even though I didn't expect teachers to put their classes online, I knew that Moodle was so user-friendly and teacher-centered, that it could be used to put resources such as worksheets, handouts, assignment criteria, syllabus and grading policy, as well as test dates and project dates. So far, several teachers keep their class sites updated, but most don't take advantage of it. Since it is not required to do more than post the syllabus, most teachers do what is required and no more. One of my goals of the future is to encourage teachers to do more with their class site. I will use my class site as an example.
This year was the first year the administration took advantage of the Moodle LMS courseware. We have put our staff development online for teachers to use. The goal is to create an Electronic Learning Community (ELC) for teachers which will act as a repository of knowledge for future teachers. It can be especially helpful for new teachers who are just beginning to add to their repertoire of teaching skills and pedagogy.
Overall, the web site has been very successful. It is the most visible achievement I have made as an instructional leader. Parents are frequently commenting on how useful it is and how when their child moves on to the high school that the miss the communications they got with our school. They will often contact me to let me know when I haven't updated the site in a timely manner, or ask questions about where to find information. I have included a list of features of the web site below. It typically takes a few hours per month to keep it updated. Every now and then I have to upgrade the site which can take several hours. There is one coming up for the email program so that we can start sending out the PTSA newsletter again.

TJ MIDDLE WEB SITE FEATURES

• School News
• School Calendar
• School Documents
• PTSA Newsletter Email
• PTSA Newsletter Downloads
• Class Information
• Class Calendars
• Class Documents
• Online Testing
• Data Disaggregation
  
• Student Book Reviews
• Student Online Resources
  

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Feeder Improvement Team Web Site

I have been a member of the Feeder Improvement Team, a group of teachers, administrators, and parents from the various school that "feed" into Governor Thomas Johnson High School. Because of my technology background, I was drafted to create a feeder schools web site that provides information to parents about all the feeder schools. The team wanted to give parents a description of the vision we have for all students as well as a some information about each of the schools that feed into the high school. One of my primary missions as an administrator would be to improve the communication between the school and the home. Parents of middle schoolers often tell me they do not get important information. Traditional paper notices are not effective in a digital age. So using technology such as web sites, email, and phone broadcasts are essential for getting parents information they need to help their children. Click to Read more ...

Vocelli Fundraiser Nights

One of the drawbacks to having so much technology at school is that it requires constant maintenance and update. New technology quickly becomes tomorrow's junk. In order to help maximize the usefulness of our technology, I began the Vocelli Fund raiser night. Every other Thursday, I send home an announcement in the "Thursday Folder" announcing the fund raiser. Vocelli donates 20% of all orders from TJ Middle School families back to the school technology fund. Using the technology fund, we have purchased upgraded memory, new cameras, and cabling for the morning announcements.

Publicity for the fund raiser is the hardest part. Until recently, we have been using the phplist mailing list software that is installed on our server to send out reminders about the pizza night. The combination of Thursday folder and email reminders worked well but parents complained that Vocelli didn't deliver to all areas of our enrollment area.


Now Vocelli Pizza has opened a new store that delivers to Spring Ridge. So I am charged with updating the mailing list software that will send the invitations to parents, inviting them to participate in our pizza nights. This will require about an hour working on our web server, backing up our database and installing the new version. It's work I enjoy doing because of the technological challenge but it also benefits our school.
I met with the new manager and we have set January 7, 2008 as our next pizza night. Rob Gim, the owner of Vocelli, has been very generous. He recently made a sizable donation to our technology fund which will help us add new technology to the school that will benefit all students.

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